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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Texas schools short by 15,000 teachers this year, analysis shows

By TERRENCE STUTZ | Dallas Morning-News
May 28, 2012
AUSTIN — Texas’ public schools should have operated with 15,000 more teachers this year, the fallout from unprecedented legislative-imposed funding cuts. And many educators believe the situation will worsen in the coming school year.
Official state figures show that schools lost 10,717 teaching positions after the state aid reductions. But to keep the student-teacher ratio the same as enrollment grew, the state would have needed 4,417 more teachers on top of the positions lost, for a total increase of 15,134 for the 2011-12 year, according to an analysis by The Dallas Morning News.
Public school advocates say the losses have hurt students, especially in crowded urban districts. Conservative groups argue that the impact on schools has been exaggerated.
In making the cuts last year, legislative leaders said they had no choice in trying to offset a $23 billion revenue shortfall caused by the sluggish economy and the failure of the state’s business tax to produce as much revenue as first projected.
“We did the best we could with the revenue we had — that’s a fact,” Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said earlier this month.
In Dallas County, school districts had nearly 1,250 fewer teachers for students and about 2,275 fewer employees based on staffing ratios for the 2010-11 school year. Those figures include the actual decreases from the previous year plus the new employees that would have been hired because of enrollment growth — nearly 7,400 pupils.
Statewide, school districts employed more than 324,000 teachers in the 2011-12 school year, meaning the lost jobs represented nearly 5 percent of the total number of positions.
Similarly, state figures show that 25,286 school jobs — including teachers, administrators and support workers — were eliminated this school year. But that also doesn’t take into account the staffing needs for the 65,000 additional students who were enrolled.
And many districts are worried because after this year’s $2 billion reduction in state aid comes another $2 billion cut. Combined with a $1.4 billion slice in state education grants, the funding loss for schools in the current two-year budget will be $5.4 billion.
Dallas hit hard
While districts in North Texas and across the state saw similar reductions this year — averaging 3.3 percent — the cuts next year will more than double for Dallas. Several others districts in the area face decreases of up to 8.6 percent.
“The second year is looking as bleak as the first,” said Amy Beneski of the Texas Association of School Administrators, citing her conversations with superintendents.
She also said school administrators are frustrated by some of the election-year rhetoric, especially from officeholders who’ve told voters that funding actually increased.
“It is absolutely false, and they know it’s not true,” she said. “I don’t think the public is buying it, especially those with kids in school.”
But Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that backed the cuts, said the dire predictions of education groups did not come true.
“There was so much talk of teachers being laid off and school district budgets being decimated by the Legislature, but we have not seen the cutbacks they warned about. The Legislature worked hard to make sure that schools were not substantially cut,” she said.
Venable also said education funding in Texas has grown at a much faster pace than student enrollment over the last 10 years, undermining claims that public schools have been hurt by diminishing financial resources.
But lawmakers came under criticism for failing to account for increased enrollment in the current two-year budget. That required districts to handle the 65,000 additional students this year with a smaller pool of teachers and school employees. A similar enrollment increase is expected in the 2012-13 school year.
Most districts increased class sizes to cope with the situation, particularly in upper grade levels. In elementary grades, where kindergarten through grade four are limited to 22 pupils, a record number of districts received state waivers to exceed the cap.
Nearly 8,600 classes in 1,729 schools were authorized to have larger classes, said the Texas Education Agency.
And next year?
“We’re holding our breath about next year,” said Clay Robison of the Texas State Teachers Association. “We are expecting to see more layoffs and larger classes. Many of our teachers will have larger classes than they’ve ever had before, and others will be working without teacher aides.”
Hundreds of school districts are expected to detail the impact of the funding cuts when they go to trial this fall in their suit against the state alleging inadequate and inequitable funding of schools.
Wayne Pierce, director of the Equity Center and former superintendent of the Kaufman school district, said the educational effects of the cuts will be felt down the road.
“The state seems to have forgotten about the 65,000 new children this year who didn’t get any new teachers,” he said. “Children don’t stand still waiting for those in charge to correct things. Whatever they are denied these two years will have an impact on their education.”
The Equity Center represents 683 low and mid-wealth districts, a majority of which are part of the school finance case.
In addition to larger classes, districts also have reduced expenses by scrapping field trips, scaling back remedial classes for low-achieving pupils and deferred maintenance and school improvement projects.
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20120528-texas-schools-short-by-15000-teachers-this-year-analysis-shows.ece